St. Marks Evangelical Lutheran Church​

Good People,

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, Jesus our Savior, and the Holy Spirit our Counselor.

Those of you who get emails from the church know that my identity has been hacked, purchases have been made on my credit cards, and my PayPal account has given money to the hackers. For the last month I have been trying to close all the electronic loopholes that the hackers have been exploiting. It seems they have a particularly robust virus that is able to bypass my passwords. I have had to reset passwords on everything, close credit cards, change checking and savings accounts, and try to close PayPal.

It has been a frustrating process especially when we opened new a checking account, a new savings account, and new credit cards only to have the credit cards and the checking account appear on my PayPal account the next day. It feels like I am fighting a malicious enemy that I cannot see and who is seeking my harm.
From my experience I strongly recommend that you do not save on your computer or phone any automatic links to your financial institutions or credit cards without having some form of two-step verification.

But, because I am a pastor, I also have a spiritual perspective on this situation. This experience is all about my identity and having it stolen from me. My deepest identity, however, is not in my profession, or my citizenship, or my family, or my accomplishments, but my deepest identity is in Christ. I am a child of God, beloved and chosen to be adopted into God’s family from before the universe began. Jesus has claimed me as his own and I have received that claim upon my life
Peace

Pastor Doug​​​